Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes by Iijima in 1991 via arc evaporation, one-dimensional (1D) nanostructures (such as nanotubes, nanowires, nanobelts, etc.) have become a new study focus. Due to the size effect and large surface areas thereof, 1D nanostructural materials possess many superior properties to conventional materials. 1D nanostructures not only provide an ideal model for fundamental studies on nanomaterials, but also have a wide prospect of technological applications. For example, many recent attentions have been focused on the applications of 1D nanostructures in catalytic support, bimolecular purification, environmental protection, and desalination. While 1D nanostructured materials possess large surface areas, modulating of their wettability from super-hydrophilic to super-hydrophobic may be achieved, which endow them important abilities for applications in water treatment, such as adsorption of leaked oil and decontamination of toxic metal ions.
Porous materials have unique structures and excellent properties in adsorption, ion exchange and catalysis, and therefore may be widely used in aeronautics and space industry, petroleum, chemical industry, chemical fibers, mechanics, instruments, biology, pharmaceutics, food, water purification, de-dusting, etc. However, traditional porous materials may not fulfill the high requirements of the rapid technological progress. It is then expected that combination of nanomaterials with porous materials will greatly increase the specific surface area of the porous materials, resulting in significant improvement of their overall properties. The emphasis on the studies of such combined materials is to explore a facile and low-cost method to prepare samples in large scale to fulfill the demand. Until now, there has been no report on the synthesis of 1D nanostructural materials on porous material substrates and their applications in oil adsorption. The difficulties lie in: i) modulating the growth process to synthesize 1D nanostructures with controllable size and morphology, such as nanowire, nanorod, and nanobelt, etc. on a porous foamed substrate; ii) preparing 1D nanostructures on porous foamed substrates in large scale via a facile and low-cost method and applying them to practical applications such as leaked crude oil adsorption and decontamination of toxic metal ions in water.